When you think about buying spreadsheet software, of course, the first thing you think about
is Lotus 1-2-3.
The product which established the spreadsheet is a major PC application.
But nowadays, there's a whole new generation of spreadsheet programs which provide new
levels of functionality and power.
Today we take a look at this new generation of spreadsheet software both for the IBM PC
and the Macintosh on this edition of the Computer Chronicles.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible by Leading Edge, makers of IBM compatible computer
systems including word processing with spelling correction, communication software, and Hays
compatible 1200 and 2400 baud modems.
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Additional funding is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte.
Byte's detailed technical articles on new hardware, software, and languages cover developments
in computer technology worldwide.
Welcome to the Computer Chronicles.
I'm Stuart Shafae and this is Gary Kildall.
Gary, when we looked at spreadsheet software last week, we were talking about the MS-DOS
world, IBM's, as you tend to when you're talking about business software.
This is a Macintosh, believe it or not, the new Mac 2.
And we hear an awful lot about the Mac now in the business marketplace.
This looks and acts a lot more like a business type computer.
What do you think?
Is the Mac going to be a serious player for people who use spreadsheets and that kind
of thing?
Well, Stuart, you know, when the Mac was first introduced several years ago, it really wasn't
targeted at the business market itself.
In those days, the typical business applications were spreadsheet, word processor, database
kind of work.
And it was really a graphics engine with a small, slow disk and so forth.
But the two worlds of business and Mac have sort of come together.
In business now, it's very important.
Desktop publishing is a very important aspect of it.
Image processing, general rich text, things of this sort.
Now the Mac has got now a large size screen, big hard disk, and so we can really see those
two things working together.
Now also Apple has announced their LAN strategy, hook up to IBM machines.
So it could be a good choice for business.
Gary, we're going to take a look at two of the top rated spreadsheet programs for the
Macintosh, Excel and Trapeze.
And we'll also see two new generation spreadsheet programs for the IBM, things that do a lot
more than the traditional spreadsheet.
Now one of the alternatives spreadsheet users have are the low cost alternatives.
And one of the big issues in spreadsheets right now is the whole issue of look and feel.
We're going to start out with a report on that.
This is a computer spreadsheet screen.
This is a computer spreadsheet screen.
And so is this.
If they look similar, that's part of the reason for a sudden increase in lawsuits between
software developers.
Lotus, best known for its 123 program, is suing Paperback Software over the similarity
of its VP Planner program.
And Mosaic Software for its twin spreadsheet.
And the heart of the complaint is that Mosaic and Paperback both infringe the overall quote
look and feel of the Lotus 123 program.
Specifically what they've claimed is that the defendants have used identical or very
similar program names or command names, very similar menu structure and sub menu structure,
same kind of syntax in the language that they use in the programs, such that the user who
looks at one program versus the other will say the overall look and feel is essentially
the same.
While a program's source code is clearly protected by law, the elusive look and feel of a screen
display is a relatively new aspect of software protection and open to sharp disagreement.
The idea is that a lot of the functionality that people need, you cannot patent or copyright.
And further, a lot of the user interface words and things ought to be available to many people,
especially that very common words are used in many cases.
Take a simple book, any book that you have.
Well, those are all words that are in the English language.
And in that sense, they're not original.
What becomes original is the manner in which the developer puts them together, the way
that he organizes them or orders them or sequences them.
That's what gets protected by copyright law.
A recent case involving communication software could have a significant impact on future
look and feel cases.
DCA, which owns the Crosstalk program, sued the Softclone company for its mirror communications
package.
The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
Given that the court in that case held that essentially one key screen was enough to constitute
copyrightable material and found that the defendants had infringed that one key screen,
that means that cloning user interfaces is going to be extremely suspect in the future.
One of the many difficulties encountered by software developers is the overwhelming dominance
of a handful of programs, which some companies view as de facto standards.
And when you go into a stretched market, you realize that there is primarily one customer
that dominates the market, and that is Lotus.
They probably have approximately 60 to 80 percent of the marketplace.
So the already existing de facto standards in the marketplace make it literally impossible
for anybody to enter that marketplace or do anything constructive.
All sides agree, for different reasons, that the outcome of these cases will have a major
impact on the future of original software.
Assume what's going to happen if in the worst case scenario, Lotus wins.
Absolutely it's going to be chaos.
I mean, people are going to start doing things just for the sake of being different.
They're going to make it different.
And it's going to be incredibly hard for any user to do anything with any of these programs.
One of the purposes of the copyright laws is to reward people's invention.
I don't know what kind of creativity it is that's being stifled in this case.
Is cloning considered that creative?
I'm not sure.
I think that perhaps more creativity comes out of the fact that authors are rewarded
for what they've done.
Joining us in the studio now is Mike Slade, the Macintosh products manager with Microsoft,
the makers of Excel.
Next to Mike is Andrew Wolfe, president of DataTailor, Inc., makers of Trapeze.
Gary.
So the first, I guess, the granddaddy of spreadsheets, VisiCalc, was a character-oriented spreadsheet.
And there was a major generation change when 1, 2, 3 came out with graphics and so forth.
Now, is the Mac 2 going to be a generation change also in spreadsheets?
Well, I think the Macintosh in general helped that occur.
The whole notion of a graphical user interface with pull-down menus and a mouse and icons
led us to design a spreadsheet Excel that was much more like working with pieces of
paper on a desktop and letting you make relations between those pieces of paper.
And this just extends that in many nice ways, color, graphics, speed.
Andy, what are your thoughts on it?
Well, I see the machine as allowing people to do things they have not been able to do
before, work with larger spreadsheets, be able to calculate more complex models, display
more charts.
And that is going to improve a lot of people's productivity.
Okay.
Now, Mike, you have a demonstration for how Excel can give us, right?
That's right.
Okay.
As you can see here on the screen, Excel doesn't look much like a traditional spreadsheet.
You have not one but several different worksheets open, and they look like different pieces
of paper on your desk, Mike.
You can zoom the screen up and work with one or several sheets at a time and build formulas
by pointing and clicking, strolling around the worksheet just by using the mouse.
It's very simple.
It's a very large worksheet.
It's very fast, very easy to work with.
It's very easy, for example, to build relationships between worksheets just by pointing and clicking.
I can take these two subsidiary spreadsheets and just paste in the names for them and link
them to this total spreadsheet.
And without having to do any complex math or anything, I can just enter the formula,
and it's automatically built so that later if one of these values changes, say, from
71,000 to a much larger number like 710,000, you see the number is instantly reflected
up here in the total spreadsheet.
In a product like 123, not only couldn't you do that, but you couldn't even think about
doing it because you could only see one spreadsheet at a time.
In the same way, it's very easy then to take a group of numbers and very quickly open a
window that has a graphical representation of those numbers, and that window can then
be linked to those numbers.
And I'll show you how that works in just a second here.
So you can see I have a graph now that represents those numbers.
And if one of these numbers up here changes to a smaller number, you'll see the graph
is instantly redrawn to reflect that change.
So you get visual feedback, and you can have as many charts or spreadsheets open at a time
as you like.
It's also very easy to change what the graph looks like.
There's a built-in pictorial gallery, another innovation that the Macintosh facilitates.
It lets you pick between different kinds of charts and have the chart be redrawn in whatever
format it is that you'd like to see it in.
And so rather than pick from some list of charts, it's very nice to be able to see a
pictorial representation of that.
One of the nicest strengths of a product like Excel is that it lets you automate things.
And what I'm going to do here now is close all those spreadsheets and open what's called
a macro.
And Excel actually records what you do.
It learns what you do, and will then play it back.
And I'm going to show you an example of something that Excel recorded my actions and turned
them into a thing called a macro.
And now it's going to automate the process of entering data, which notice it's actually
prompting me with this little dialog box, and then asking me to put the data in.
And then it takes the data, reformats it, and puts up a chart window of the data without
me having to do anything.
And that's really what computing is all about.
OK, yeah, you didn't have to write the macro.
It wrote the macro following what you were doing the last time around.
Yeah, before I had just done those same commands, and it wrote the command line.
You can write it if you like, but it's very simple to have Excel write it for you.
And you can just go through.
The new machine is going to give us opportunities to make Excel run in color and lots of things
to expand the capabilities of it.
But since we've introduced the product, we've just had a fantastic reception to it.
Speaking of color, Mike, if I can ask you to unload Excel, and we can get trapeze in
there.
I'm going to ask you to do that, Andrew.
Trapeze does run in color.
We're going to see that in just a minute.
One of the features of the Mac 2, of course, is the color.
What role does color play in spreadsheets?
Does it matter at all?
Well, it can help the person who's developing a spreadsheet to show his numbers in a way
that's easier for other people to comprehend, and himself.
He can show different numbers in red to show that he's losing money, or highlight labels
with color so that they're easy to find in a very large worksheet.
Of course, you can do charts in color, which allows you to show the information much more
graphically than just black and white can do.
Maybe the best way to answer it is to run trapeze for us, and we'll see how you do use
color, Andrew.
Tell us what you're doing as you do it.
I'm just selecting three worksheets that I'm going to be showing and opening them all.
So you notice the windows are in blue.
The difference between trapeze and a normal spreadsheet is that instead of having rows
and columns, it's a free-form type of spreadsheet.
The basic unit is a block, which is a collection of numbers, which can be a row, a column,
or a table, or even just an individual value.
It has a name, which you can change.
You use the names to build formulas.
So in this case, this total sales block is the sum of sales.
So it knows that there are four values here, so it's summed them.
The formula over here is sales divided by total sales.
So it understands that there are four values, and there's one value, so it needs to produce
four values.
And because the relationships are all built by name, I can take the block and move it
anywhere I want, rearrange it.
I can change its size and shape.
I can change its font.
And of course, the relationships don't change.
The relationships are totally independent of where the block is located.
And as you can see, there's also charts on the same page.
The charts are built the same way, with a chart formula and then the sales block and
the region block.
So as I change the number up here, you can see the chart will also change, and all the
numbers will recalculate.
Because the Macintosh is so good at doing fonts and styles and pictures, there's no
reason why you can't include a picture in with your worksheet.
This may be a trivial example, but it does show the ability to include graphics along
with your spreadsheet, so that you can have a data entry form or an invoice and have calculations
on top of it mixed in in different fonts along with your graph.
Now this is a show you an example of how you can build a formula very easy without having
to remember how to type things.
Right here is the sum of investments, which is a block right here.
Now I'm going to build this simply by pulling the sum function from the scrolling menu,
and then down here is a list of all the open worksheets.
So I can go to any worksheet that's in memory by name.
So in this case, I'm going to get invest, hit the checkbox, and it recalculated it.
So Trapeze allows you to not only do calculations, but also to lay them out in an attractive
manner and a lot of people who do calculations need to present them to people.
So Trapeze allows you to do it without having to go to other programs to put all the pieces
together.
Andrew, is Trapeze written especially for the Mac 2 or does it run on...
It runs on all Macintoshes.
This version is the version we shipped in January long before the Mac 2 existed and
it ran in color then.
We are producing a version specifically for the Mac 2 to take advantage of additional
colors and some other features it can do.
Mike, what about Excel?
Excel was written at least almost two years ago and it runs fine on the Mac 2, but it
runs on the entire Macintosh family.
We are also working on a new version that will take more specific advantage of the capabilities.
Gary, I think it's pretty clear the answer to your question is we've come a long way
from Lotus 1, 2, 3.
This is a generation leap.
Gentlemen, thanks very much.
We're going to be back in just a minute with two more spreadsheet programs that do a lot
more than traditional spreadsheet work.
One of them is called Words and Figures.
The other is called Predict.
So stay with us.
With us now in the studio is Camillo Wilson.
Camillo is president of Lifetree Software, makers of Words and Figures.
Next to Camillo is Richard Roth, the director of Unison Technology, and they make a product
called Predict.
Camillo, on the last segment we just saw the Mac 2 with all the fancy high resolution color
graphics and so forth.
You feel like people are going to move to that high res graphics model or are we going
to stick with the 1, 2, 3 model everybody knows?
Well, there's no doubt that some people will want to look into the world of the future.
People are always doing so.
But the fact is that 1, 2, 3 right now has an install base of approximately 2 million
copies and that are compatible programs.
And the last thing that people want to do is to relearn what they already know.
Now, Richard, both of you have products that really improve upon the 1, 2, 3 model.
What sort of things have you done to yours?
Well, what we've done is to take what everybody already knows in terms of the spreadsheet
model and add in the capability that a small group of people want to be able to do to express
uncertainty in their spreadsheets and forecasting and modeling various business situations.
So this is an extension of the basic model.
Camillo, can you show us Words and Figures?
Certainly.
Words and Figures was predicated on the idea that first of all people wanted a reasonably
priced Lotus compatible spreadsheet, which is the first thing that Words and Figures
is.
And on top of that, we added to Words and Figures a word processor, which is the most
commonly used function that people do on their personal computers.
So I will start here with a reconventional spreadsheet.
Before you get to that, Camillo, I mean, what's the logic?
I assume there's some premise here in terms of bringing the word processor into the spreadsheet.
The premise is that if you have a financial story to tell, you may also want to tell people
a qualitative, a verbal story about it.
You know, you want to brag about your profits or to, you know, be sorry about your losses.
So, for example, here we have a regular spreadsheet.
Unlike any spreadsheet, what if you change one number, the totals change and all the
percentages change, and we also have the conventional graphing capabilities that 1, 2, 3, Release
1A has.
What is new about Words and Figures, besides a very high-performance spreadsheet, is the
addition of a simple-to-use word processor.
So you can simply start by saying, the results for the year are...
So you press one key and boom, you're into a word processor.
Exactly.
Rather than have to reload.
Exactly.
And the word processor feels like a real word processor.
It does not feel like a spreadsheet.
A lot of people use 1, 2, 3 to write, but that is a very unkind way to do it.
So here we write our report, bragging to the chairman about our results, and now we import
the spreadsheet itself.
So we say, bring me the first 10 rows of the spreadsheet, and sure enough, here they are.
Now not only are they here present in the word processor, but they're also live.
Notice that my cursor now looks like the conventional spreadsheet cursor.
And if in fact I change these numbers right here to a large number, all of the numbers
are recalculated.
If I take a look at my spreadsheet, sure enough, the spreadsheet was also recalculated.
So you can operate on the spreadsheet inside the word processor.
And vice versa.
I mean, any change made in one is reflected automatically in the other.
And then to make it even more interesting, for example, you can split the screen into
two windows.
Here we have a horizontal window, and let's turn this one into a word processing window.
So you can be composing the text in here while you're viewing the spreadsheet in the other
window, and if you change one number here, sure enough, it will change in the other one.
There it is.
OK.
Is the word processor a so-called full-powered word processor?
No, the word processor will not put a display right out of business.
It is designed specifically to be a compatible word processor with the spreadsheet.
For example, some of the things you notice in the word processor is that it uses the
normal slash and the menu bar.
So it feels very much like a spreadsheet, but it does all the things you expect a simple
word processor to do.
Just a layer on top of the spreadsheet, a simple layer on top of the spreadsheet, then?
Yes, the word processor.
Camilo, if you can unload words and figures there so we can get ready to take a look at
Predictive.
And Richard, let's follow up on Gary's question before.
You talked about using uncertainty inside a spreadsheet.
Explain that a little bit more.
Well, basically, when people talk about uncertain things, they talk about, they make statements
like my sales will be between two various numbers, and this one's going to be more possible
than another one.
They aren't really dealing with absolute numbers the way they do in a typical spreadsheet.
It forces you to put a specific number in there.
Exactly.
And if you don't have the capability of representing uncertainty, then when you do present the
results in these forecasts, what you're doing is leaving out the majority of the data that
you're really talking about.
And what Predict enables you to do is to encapsulate all of the possibilities for a particular variable
on your spreadsheet with all the probabilities associated with that and do calculations based
on those probabilities.
Could you show us how you do that?
Sure, absolutely.
Let me just bring up the Predict here.
The best way to show it is to sort of give a comparison, if you will, between the way
people use spreadsheets and the way you would use Predict in a similar situation.
I can just restore a little sheet here.
This is the most simple business model you could have, sales, costs, and then profits.
And what I can do is go down here and show you what a spreadsheet user might do.
For example, he might say that his sales are, let's say, $1,000 and come down here and say
that his costs are $500.
And then doing a calculation to calculate the difference between the two to show what
the profits are, in this case, something like this.
OK, your sales minus your costs are going to equal your profits there.
OK.
And that gives me a number.
Now, in a spreadsheet, that works very nicely.
If I want to do what is, I have to go around and change those numbers and record all the
different values.
With Predict, however, I can do something a bit different.
I can actually represent all the values for a particular variable, in this case, sales,
in a single cell.
And I do that by creating what is called a distribution.
Predict has eight of these that are predefined and one that you can define yourself.
Now, in the case that I just mentioned, let's say my sales are between 500 and 1,000, most
likely, let's say, 700.
That's what we call a triangular distribution.
I can tell Predict to do or maintain, if you will, a list of 100 what ifs and then put
in the values for the distribution.
Let's say 500 as my minimum, 700 is my most likely, and 1,000 as my maximum.
And I've created a probability distribution.
I can do the same thing for cost, let's say that I would say my cost would be between
300 and $700.
And that's a uniform distribution because it doesn't really have a middle point.
Again, I'll keep track of 100 what ifs, and I can keep track of up to 8,000 if I want.
And let's say between 300 and 700.
Just putting in your min, your max there.
Exactly.
Now, the nice feature, actually the major feature of Predict is its ability to do the
same sort of calculations you would in a spreadsheet, but to maintain all of the results that you
would do for each one of those what ifs.
So I can create a list of values, and rather than an initial list, which might be historical
data, I can create it in an output sense, creating 100 values given my calculation.
In this case, F7 minus F9.
Now I can ask Predict to go out and do 100 what ifs automatically just by giving it that.
And as you can see, the system is picking values from each of those two probability
distributions and calculating values in the profit cell.
And at the bottom of the screen, it's telling me how much time I have left until my calculations
are done.
The real question is now that all those values have been generated, what can we do with them?
Predict has a number of features built in as spreadsheet features to handle probability
distributions in terms of displays, and for example, graphics.
So it's done its 100 calculations.
How do you look at this now?
Right.
One of the ways most comprehensively to look at a lot of data is to draw a graph.
I can do that, let's say, by bringing down my profits graph here and looking at the information
in this cell F11.
But not just the number that's on the screen.
I want to look at all the values that have been generated.
So I put a dollar sign on there.
And now Predict will take those 100 values and create a probability distribution.
And that will be shown in a graph here in a second.
I can see a number of things here.
We can see that there's some probability of a loss over towards the minus side.
There's a much greater probability of a profit in this small business plan.
And we can also see what the most likely value would be on the graph.
Can you calculate the odds of a loss?
Sure.
There's functionality, for example, with this perform calculate function that allows me
to see, let's say, the chance of a number being wildly negative in that cell.
And the answer is 8%.
That's right.
What about the new Mac 2 just before and, of course, we know about the new IBM personal
system 2.
What are the consequences of that new IBM system in terms of you guys who are developing
software?
Well, from our standpoint, obviously, people are demanding techniques such as these, which
involve a lot more computations and a lot more data being stored.
And obviously, the faster the machines and the more data that they can store, you know,
going beyond, let's say, the 640K limit is a boon to products like ours.
And what about the graphical interface?
Are we going to see that as a standard application interface?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, the fact is that people are very much used to seeing things in this format.
There are, you know, two, three, four million spreadsheet users in the world that use it
exactly as you see there.
Whether they want to learn something else to get the job done, only time will tell.
Gentlemen, we're out of time.
Thank you very much.
That completes our look at spreadsheets.
We'll be back next week with part four of this business application series looking at
database managers.
So be sure to join us then.
Right now, stay tuned for this week's computer news.
I'm Susan Chase sitting in for Stuart Shafaei in the Random Access File this week.
Lotus Development Corporation has signed a 10-year agreement with IBM to design software
for its largest computers, starting with a version of 1, 2, 3 for the System 370 mainframes.
The deal puts Lotus on a more even footing with Microsoft, which recently overtook Lotus
as the world's largest manufacturer of PC software and has long had a working relationship
with IBM.
Its most devastating effect will be on Ashton Tate, the only one of the Big Three software
makers without such a relationship.
The new version of 1, 2, 3 will not be available until next year.
Lotus also announced two other versions of 1, 2, 3 with multidimensional support capability,
a line of multi-user database programs and an enhanced programming capability for 1,
2, 3.
And the race for the fastest computers continues.
ETA Systems recently unveiled the ETA 10, a supercomputer capable of processing 10 billion
calculations per second.
ETA, a controlled data subsidiary, claims the new machine has twice the performance
of supercomputers made by industry leader Cray Research.
Cray, on the other hand, believes their Cray 2 is three times faster than the ETA 10.
And further competition comes from thinking machines, with their announcement of a machine
that reportedly outperforms both ETA 10 and Cray 2 on some tasks.
Apple Computer plans to create an independent software company to promote the creation of
programs for its computers by small developers.
The new Apple Company will sell programs written by other companies who would not otherwise
have the resources to market and distribute their products.
In addition, it will sell programs currently published by Apple, but under its own label.
Apple sees these new products as a way of stimulating sales of its computers by making
them capable of doing more things.
Now it's time for this week's software review, and here's Paul Schindler.
Outlines obscure details.
The same is true of many outliners now on the market.
They tend to obscure rather than illuminate.
Now that was before More, a most graphical outliner and database.
First of all, as a simple outliner, it offers you the option of looking at any outline in
three different graphic formats, tree, bullet, or outline.
You can hop back and forth between various levels of detail.
In addition, you can change fonts, add lines, eliminate the menu at the bottom, change numbers
to bullets, and use More to create overhead slides.
Now if that were all it could do, More would be cute.
But you can also have six different files open at once on the screen.
And More can total figures within the outline.
Actually, More does many things.
It can do memos and letters.
It can keep an online calendar.
Now suppose you want to keep your calendar in More.
You bring up a calendar, drag the mouse across it, and More will create a calendar outline.
Other templates can be used for expenses, order entry, or an address book.
More is an outliner for use on the Apple Macintosh, $295 from Living Video Text of Mountain View,
California.
For Computer Chronicles, I'm Paul Schindler.
And that's it for this week's Computer Chronicles.
The Computer Chronicles is made possible by Leading Edge, makers of IBM-compatible computer
systems including word processing with spelling correction, communication software, and Hays-compatible
1200 and 2400 baud modems.
Leading Edge, with over 1,000 service centers nationwide.
Leading Edge, leading the way to the information age.
Additional funding is provided by McGraw-Hill, publishers of Byte.
Byte's detailed technical articles on new hardware, software, and languages cover developments
in computer technology worldwide.